


roberto has never been to medical school

by 4wholecats



Series: Whumptober 2020 [10]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken | Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo | Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Genre: Blood and Gore, Don't try this at home kids, Gen, Prompt: Internal Bleeding/Blood Loss, Whumptober 2020, impromptu surgeries done in seedy inn rooms, internal bleeding, medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4wholecats/pseuds/4wholecats
Summary: The first candle flickers to life nearby, and as Reiden moves to light the next one, Roberto can see that it’s not vomit on the floor, caused by bad rations. It’s blood. A lot of blood. It stains the sheets and pillow of the bed, and runs down Camus’s face as it oozes out of his mouth and nose.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959316
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	roberto has never been to medical school

**Author's Note:**

> for the love of all that is holy if you think you are internally bleeding do not try to fix it yourself GO TO AN EMERGENCY ROOM

Camus stands haphazardly, as if he had forgotten where his spine was. One hand is on his hip, covering a suspiciously darkened spot on his uniform. He shifts from one leg to the other uncomfortably; impatiently. Under his glove, the grey fabric of his trainee’s coat turns a deep, rich red. 

He takes deep, slow breaths, rubbing the back of his head with his hand. His hair ribbon is long gone, undone by a glancing enemy blow. He tucks a few sweaty strands behind his ear as he stares at Reiden, who stands beyond the window of this town’s small inn, arguing with the innkeeper. 

“You should sit down,” Roberto says, still atop his horse. The bowman chews idly at a chunk of dried meat, already digging into his daily rations. He also stares through the window, where Reiden can be seen gesturing towards his companions. Camus frowns.

“I’m fine. It’s not so bad.”

Roberto responds with a non-committal noise and the sounds of someone trying to eat shoe-leather. Camus shifts again, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, obviously still aching from the multiple warhammer blows he had taken to the stomach on their trip so far, as well as the knife wound. 

“Hey, stop that,” Roberto chides as Reiden throws his hands in the air on the other side of the glass. “You’ll only make it worse.” Camus tears his eyes from the window to shoot his companion a withering look.

“I can assure you, it’s barely a wound. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.” 

Camus wasn’t wrong, at least as far as Roberto could see. The sword had hardly touched him, just managing to slash through his skin with the tip of the blade. The bleeding may very well stop momentarily, as long as pressure was put on it. All three of the knights had seen far worse injuries happen in basic training alone. 

Their conversation is cut short by the sound of a door bursting open, Reiden appearing before them with an irritated look on his face. 

“Come on, he says we can stay for one night, as long as you don’t bleed on the sheets.”

Camus raises his eyebrows and approaches the door, hand still covering the stain.

“I’ll be there in just a few minutes. Gotta tie up my horse,” Roberto waves as he steers his steed towards the town stable. The little village is the perfect picture of quaintness; just a few small shops, a gathering of houses, and a lush patch of grass in the middle of it all. These folks had it good here; there was even a working public fountain. Roberto paid the man at the stables and splashed his face in the clean, running water. Another town successfully freed of bandits. 

He doesn’t rush back to the inn, preferring to take in the sights and sounds of small town life. He grew up in a town much like this, and remembers it fondly; the sound of children playing in the grazing yard familiar and comforting. He would sleep well tonight, knowing those kids and their families wouldn’t be left to the mercy of bandits while the knights slept. 

He nodded at the innkeeper at the bar as he entered, and the older man rolled his eyes at him. With a thought of ‘ _what in Naga’s name had Reiden told this poor man in order to get a free room’_ , he approached the counter.

“Uh-” 

“Your friends are upstairs. If I catch even a whiff of you lot causing problems or damaging my shit, I’m throwing you all out on your asses, injured or not,” he growled, pointing an accusing finger at the younger man.

“Oh… of course. U-understandable.” Roberto backed away from the bar, spinning on his heel towards the stairs. It was strange; despite their rank as mere trainees, their status as soldiers was usually more than enough to demand at least _some_ respect from the general public. Perhaps some less-than-honorable knights had stayed here in the past.

He reaches the landing, mumbling an ‘excuse me’ to a young couple as he brushes past them. The doors on the second floor are identical, and Roberto regrets not asking for their room number. At the end of the hall, one of them creaks open, and a familiar brown-haired head pokes through.

“Ah, Reiden,” Roberto says quietly, not wanting to disturb the other guests as he marches ahead. Reiden moves aside to let him pass.

“Where did you go? We thought you died,” Reiden says, a note of annoyance still present in his voice. 

“I told you, I still had my horse! We’re in no rush, so I took my time getting back; this village is pretty nice,” Roberto responds with a slight smile, watching his companion’s expression soften as he closes the door. It’s a decent room, with two beds, a desk, and a table pushed into the corner. He can hear the sound of water running behind a second door, which not only tells him that they have a private bathroom, but also that Camus hasn’t run for the hills in his absence. “I assume we’re sharing?” He gestures to one of the beds. 

“Yeah, unless you want to sleep on the floor.”

“Absolutely not.” Roberto’s travel bag hits the floor with a soft thud as he sits on the bed they’ve claimed. “I guess Camus bribed you into getting his own bed?” 

Reiden snorts. “I’ll let him have this one for free. He’s injured.”

Roberto looks to the bathroom door, where the sounds of running water can still be heard. “Is he really alright?”

“I assume,” Reiden shrugs, sitting next to Roberto on the bed and leaning backwards. The very image of relaxation. “He hasn’t run out yelling yet.”

As if on cue, the doorknob twists revealing the third member of their merry band. Camus isn’t screaming, but he does look rather glum. His hand isn’t bound to his injury anymore, and Roberto assumes based on his wet hair and changed clothes that he’s bathed and bandaged himself in the time that the bowman was gone. Camus wanders to the other bed, flopping down on it gracelessly, long legs dangling off the edge. 

Reiden quirks an eyebrow.

“See? He’s got the right idea. I call the bathroom next.”

\---

Roberto wakes to the sound of someone retching. It’s loud, and close, and _wet_ , and it’s followed by the sound of liquid splattering against wood. He sits up straight, despite the ache in his muscles, his head swimming slightly from the sudden movement. Looking around wildly, his eyes struggle to focus in the pitch dark of the small room. He squints, catching sight of a person on the other bed, curled over the side of the mattress, something dribbling from their mouth and catching the light of the moon. 

“Camus!” Roberto hisses, throwing the sheets off his legs and stumbling to his feet in the dark. The floor is cold against his bare feet. Reiden, woken by the sudden movement, grumbles before sitting up himself.

“What are you wiggling around so much for…” He mumbles, brain still clouded with sleep. Roberto ignores him, kneeling next to Camus’s bed, careful to avoid the dark puddle on the floor. In the low light of the room, he can see Camus’s eyes, opened the size of dinner plates and covered in a glassy haze of unshed tears. 

“Reiden,” Roberto snaps, listening to the sound of his bedmate shifting around. “Light some candles.” The bowman searches his pockets for a piece of cloth or string, and thankfully is rewarded with the yarn that had held his lunch pack together. He reaches behind Camus’s head, carefully tying his hair away from his face, despite the fact that much of it was already wet. Reiden pads across the room with some semblance of speed, having picked up the urgency in the other man’s voice. 

The first candle flickers to life nearby, and as Reiden moves to light the next one, Roberto can see that it’s not vomit on the floor, caused by bad rations. It’s blood. A lot of blood. It stains the sheets and pillow of the bed, and runs down Camus’s face as it oozes out of his mouth and nose. His breaths are quick and shallow, and Roberto backs up slightly, afraid of being vomited on.

“Shit-” Reiden hisses behind him, scrambling to light the last few candles. “I thought he only got nicked by that sword-” he’s cut off by another wet sound as a second splash of blood meets the floor, droplets sailing through the air and staining Roberto’s clothes. Camus sags when he’s finished, tension leaving his muscles so quickly that he nearly falls out of the bed. Roberto catches him by the shoulder and guides him into laying on his back. The cavalier’s eyes roll back in his head, breathing still fast and panicked. His hands scrabble at the hem of his shirt, and Roberto swats them away in order to investigate the wound himself. 

The bandages are, for the most part, clean. There’s only a few spots stained with light brown, a sign that the gash had stopped bleeding hours ago. What makes Roberto’s stomach flip... is the bruises. 

Massive splotches, so large and so dark they seem to be black voids, collect on Camus’s abdomen, as if the man had been smeared with paint in his sleep. Roberto touches the largest one with a shaking hand, the bruise almost twice as large as his own palm. The area is firm and unyielding, and Camus shakes and gasps, hands flailing at him in an effort to knock him away. Now that his hair was collected in a messy ponytail, the soldiers can see blood trickling in thin lines from his ears, as well as his mouth and nose.

“Fuck,” Reiden whispers as he shakes the match out, jogging to deposit it in the sink. 

“Reiden, do you-” Roberto pauses to roughly shove Camus’s head to the side as he vomits again, not wanting to add ‘choking’ to his list of problems. “Your sister is a cleric, yeah? What do we do about this?”

“Fuck if I know!” Reiden retorts, exiting the bathroom with a bowl of water and a relatively clean towel. “We can’t be too loud though, or the innkeeper will throw us out.” And that would spell disaster for all of them. 

“You try to clean up a little, I’ll do something about these,” Roberto said, motioning to the dark spots. They had to be more than just simple bruises, that much was certain. Normal bruises don’t make a man vomit his heart out, or bleed from his ears. 

Roberto knew very little about the dangers of internal bleeding, aside from the fact that it was, well, dangerous. It seemed like a terrible way to go, drowning inside of your own body and choking on blood as it crushes you from within. He turns from the scene towards his travel bag, still on the floor where he dropped it. He produced a package of bandages, some pain-killing salves, and an elixir. He paused for a moment, his thoughts moving in time with the harsh breathing sounds behind him. He added his travel knife to the pile.

Turning around, he dumps his supplies on the end of the bed, heaving Camus’s legs away, towards the wall. Reiden squawks when he sees the knife, moving from where he stands over their patient’s head, dabbing at his ears with a quickly dirtying towel. 

“What the hell are you gonna do with that?”

“I think we have to relieve the pressure. The blood is crushing his organs; he’s gonna die if I don’t do this.” Roberto’s voice sounds surprisingly steady as he raises the knife.

“At least clean it first!”

“Good call.” 

Roberto stumbles to the bathroom and runs the knife under the tap, nicking his hand on the blade. At least he knew it was sharp enough to get the job done. He rushed back to the bed, not bothering to bandage his own finger. 

“Get his shirt off,” he ordered. Reiden did his best to comply, but Camus’s arms refused to obey the other man's wishes.

“Gimme the knife for a sec-” 

Reiden cuts the shirt away, balling it up and tossing it on the ground before handing the knife back. Roberto takes it, and it’s only now that his hands start to actually shake. 

“Uh, grab his arms for me, would you?”

Reiden lifts Camus’s head slightly before sitting down and placing it on his lap. He takes both of the man’s arms in one hand before leaning over, using his own body to keep him from moving. Roberto hovers over Camus’s stomach, unsure of where to begin. The splotches have gotten darker. 

“He’s gonna kick you if you try from that angle,” Reiden warned. Roberto glanced at where the other cavalier’s legs lay on the mattress, knock-kneed and shaking, and decided that his companion was right. He clambered onto the bed with difficulty, careful to not drop the knife. Straddling the other man’s thighs, he used his body as a weight. Camus was strong, perhaps strong enough to kick him off if he wanted to, but this was far from a normal training exercise. 

Roberto holds the knife above the largest splotch. Reiden looks at him expectantly, body tensed, ready for a fight.

The blade presses down.

The blood trapped beneath _sprays_ out in an almost comical fashion, and Camus goes from completely tense to limp underneath the men. 

“Gimme the towel!” Roberto hisses, grabbing at empty air. Once the fabric is in his grip, he practically shoves it into the wound, blood soaking the material thoroughly until it can absorb no more. “Leave him be and go get more!”

Reiden does as he’s told, and as expected, Camus does not move when he lets go of his wrists. His eyes are closed, so it’s safe to say he passed out at the knife’s first touch. Whether that was good or bad remained to be seen. 

A new towel was pressed to the wound, soaking up even more of the blood. Even in the low light of the candles, it was easy to see how pale Camus had gotten; his skin had taken on an ashen, grey quality that Roberto usually associated with corpses. 

“Okay. Okay…” Roberto whispered to himself, putting aside the knife. There would be no need for it from now on, now that the bleeding was decidedly external. He had no experience with healing magic, but every trainee received battlefield medicine training. He simply had to clear his head and remember what to do next, sooner rather than later. 

First, the source of the bleeding had to be stopped. Well, the source was obviously one of the organs, or at least the tissue surrounding it. Roberto didn’t know enough about the minutiae of the human body to start digging around, so instead he uncapped the elixir.

“Are you just gonna… pour that in there?” Reiden asked, disgusted and clearly afraid.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“No!”

“Then yeah! I am!”

The elixir had a pungent, medicinal smell. Biting his tongue in stress, Roberto gently presses the opening of the bottle into the incision, waiting for it to empty before pulling his arm away. Camus does not stir, but the flow of blood seems to thin just a bit.

“Did that… did that actually work?” Reiden whispers, not daring to move.

Roberto swipes at the wound with the towel again, and when he pulls away, the flow outward is indeed much slower. They both breathe a sigh of relief. Roberto drops the towel as the flow turns into a slow ooze, reaching to grab the bandages. 

“Fuck…” Reiden whispers quietly, watching the wound mend itself with the elixir’s help.

“He’ll need to see a cleric when we get back… but he should be okay. At least for the rest of the night,” Roberto stands slowly, pressing the supplies into Reiden’s slack hand. “You know what to do with these, right?”

Reiden nods.

“Good. Let me know if… anything else happens. Try not to be too loud though.”

“Where are you going?” Reiden asks, unrolling the first strip.

Roberto sighs, headache setting in. He’d done his part, and the stress was sinking in fully now. Hopefully everyone would survive without him for just a few hours.

“I’m taking a fucking shower, and going back to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> theres an alternate universe where roberto is a much heavier sleeper, and half a decade in the future, belf, captain of the sable order, beheads princess nyna in the bowels of castle archanea without a second thought.


End file.
